Ian Campbell

PREVIEW:

Profile PLUS
Quality Characteristic Analysis & Trends for the NCD Journey

You will be familiar with one of the famous NCD images: the cutaway photograph of the grass with its shoots and roots. It speaks of the need to see each church as a living organism and the need to look beneath the surface at root causes of health issues if they are to be addressed effectively. Profile Plus is a new comprehensive biotic tool for exploring and analyzing the root causes of NCD Survey results.

It is a joint development project between the Institute for NCD International and the NCD National Partner in Australia.

The compact graphical layout of Profile Plus encourages users to view the detailed results in a dynamic and holistic way. It offers many significant benefits, including:

• helping identify the root causes of the minimum factor.

• identifying unique health issues by encouraging users to explore combinations of results.

• highlighting strengths, making it easier to apply areas of relatively greater health to those less healthy.

• identifying long term trends (or lack of progress) by including up to four sets of NCD results in the one report. Such trends are often not evident in just one set of results.

• giving church leaders greater confidence in deciding what action to take in response to their NCD results, while offering comprehensive analysis of what resulted from that action when the next Survey is taken.

• generating momentum and encouraging churches to see NCD as a long term process of continuous improvement.

Extensive work has been put into the design of Profile Plus to make it easy to use. An explanation of how to read the graphs to best effect has been included. The best way to learn about Profile Plus is to start using it.

This is a significant resource for churches at all stages of growth in health. For churches less healthy it will reveal two or three major issues that will need significant attention and resourcing. For churches that are very healthy it gives the detail necessary for making those small yet significant adjustments to achieve that next level of health.

Profile Plus is produced by the Institute for NCD International, but you must order it through your NCD National Partner. You do not need to wait until your next Survey to get a Profile Plus report; you can order a report for surveys already completed (if your latest survey was done in 2004). Profile Plus will be released in September/October 2004.

Ian Campbell is NCD National Partner for Australia and co-author of Profile Plus